Michelle Beetar

Vice President & MD of Africa, Fair Isaac

Search every verified Michelle Beetar interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Michelle Beetar, Vice President and Managing Director for Africa at FICO, discussed the need for greater female representation in STEM and artificial intelligence during two radio interviews on Channel Africa's "Africa Rise and Shine" in 2021. In an August 2021 interview tied to Women's Month in South Africa, Beetar, then a finalist in the Women in Credit Awards, described her own career path as starting in mining and human resources before entering the IT industry, and encouraged young women to pursue technology careers, citing the field's demand for talent and growth potential. She also emphasized the importance of skills such as mathematics, curiosity, and communication for those entering data science. In a March 2021 interview ahead of International Women's Day, Beetar stressed that diversity in teams developing AI is crucial to avoid perpetuating bias in models, noting that AI systems are trained on data sets that may contain inherent biases. She called for more women to study and work in analytics and AI, and suggested that non-traditional educational backgrounds, such as behavioral science combined with coding interest, could also lead to careers in the field. Beetar also referenced FICO's global work, including protecting over 2.6 billion payment cards, as an example of the scale of data analytics in the industry.